564 - Folk Art and the Bible

Folk Art and the Bible
By Jane Dillenberger

UNIQUE to this generously illustrated volume on eighteenth and nineteenth century folk and popular art, is its theme, biblical art. Though a sizable bibliography for so-called folk or "naive" art now exists, an examination of the contents of these books yields the ubiquitous portrait, still life subjects, and local scenes. Only occasionally does one find a drawing of a Prodigal Son or Supper at Emmaus. The fact that a large body of work on biblical themes by untrained artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries does indeed exist is unknown even to many nineteenth century scholars. This is unfortunate for many of these works have intrinsic artistic merit. Also they provide us with a mirror of popular piety, in their choices of biblical themes and their often idiosyncratic interpretations of these stories. Thus we are greatly indebted to Anita Schorsch and Martin Greif who, for our perusal and pleasure, have gathered some hundred examples of folk or "naive" art with Old and New Testament subjects.

An informative essay deals with the visual and literary sources for the iconography found in the plates. The visual sources are reckoned to be the stage sets and costuming of medieval plays (Emile Mâle first called attention to medieval drama as a source of visual imagery in medieval art), illustrated Bibles and prayer books, and finally seventeenth century moralistic emblem books. Literary sources are not only well known, oft-published volumes like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Foxe's Book of Martyrs, but also such ephemeral but no less influential writings as those of the Englishwoman, Hannah More, whose Sacred Dramas (1798) were reprinted in New England in the nineteenth century.

In addition to the essay, paragraphs accompanying each plate identify the symbolism and relate the imagery to the biblical text. While the plates and text include and make reference to some seventeenth and eighteenth century materials and a few English, Dutch, and Swedish examples, both are centered predominantly in nineteenth century New England, an emphasis which the title does not suggest.

The choices of biblical subjects shed light on the particular focus of

Jane Dillenberger is currently an adjunct faculty member of the Hartford Seminary Foundation in the field of religion and art. She has taught at Drew University, the University of California at Berkeley Extension Division, San Francisco Theological Seminary, and the Graduate Theological Union, and she has also held several curatorial postitions at various museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Atheneum, and the San Francisco Museum of Art. She is the author of Style and Content in Christian Art (1965), Secular Art with Sacred Themes (1969), and The Hand and Spirit: Religious Art in America, 1700-1900 (1972). She is reviewing The Morning Stars Sang: The Bible in Popular and Folk Art by Anita Schorsch and Martin Greif (New York, Universe Books, 1978. 128 pp. $12.95).

565 - Folk Art and the Bible

popular piety and spirituality in nineteenth century America. The authors trace sources and offer interpretations based on their knowledge of the period.

Their selections of plates suggest some conclusions which the authors do not draw. For example, American artists preferred biblical subjects which could be interpreted as moralistic, pathetic, or sentimental rather than those which evoked the sovereign power, majesty, and mystery of God's activity. The Fall of Adam and Eve and Expulsion from the Garden are often represented, whereas the great creative acts of the first six days are not. Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac is not represented with any frequency, but Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness is. Thus the heroic and ambiguous elements of the Sacrifice are eschewed for the pathos and domestic sentiment evoked by the outcasts Hagar and

566 - Folk Art and the Bible

Ishmael. The great acts of Moses-the receiving of the Law, the Golden Calf, the Striking of the Rock, or the Burning Bush-are seldom found in American nineteenth century art, but the Finding of Moses by Pharaoh's daughter is ubiquitous. Again, the domestic and pathetic sentiments are played upon by this infancy story, whereas Moses' mighty acts evoking awe and wonder are not represented in the visual arts.

The text and plates are not only most concerned with nineteenth century America, but also exclusively with Protestantism. Several Pennsylvania "frakturs" are included, but the Shaker illuminations and the Moravian paintings of Johann Valentine Haidt are not. And no reference is made to the contemporaneous art of the santeros of the Spanish Catholic Southwest. One can argue that Shaker art, Moravian art, and the art of the Southwest draw upon differing iconographic sources. By limiting themselves to the Northeast, the authors are dealing with the art which is most representative of mainline Protestantism of the nineteenth century.

The authors decry the term "naive" for their artists, citing their use of iconography based on "centuries of accumulated tradition and exegetical commentary" as an evidence of sophistication and intellectual content. Still the iconography is usually appropriated capriciously (or "naively") from the large body of traditional imagery. Its vitality

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and authenticity derive from what is not traditional, like the inclusion of local or topical detail, as in Emeline Dow's watercolor (plate 53) which shows Hagar and Ishmael leaving a New England clapboard house, or the artist's idiosyncratic interpretation, as in Erastus Salisbury Field's Garden of Eden (plate 49), where a bashful Adam stands waist-deep in lilies, looking away from a grimly determined Eve.

Not only is the imagery and symbolism often chosen in nontraditional ways, but also both are represented with simplified forms. Friedrick Krebs' lively drawings of the Prodigal Son (plates 100-117) tell the story as a cartoon does with pen lines and flat color washes and with the text rendered as part of the scene. The charm of the drawings is undeniable, but if one were to set Rembrandt's late great Prodigal Son alongside Krebs' drawings, it would be abundantly clear that while both

568 - Folk Art and the Bible

belong to the large class, "art," a different term is needed for Krebs' drawings and the art in this book. The authors prefer the designation "folk" art to "naive" art, and it is a term which has been used as well as the term "primitive."

All three terms present problems, but for many art historians, folk art is the product of communal experience and is usually anonymous. Early writers on this kind of art used the term "primitive," perhaps adapted from the art historical terms, Italian Primitives, and Flemish Primitives for the art of the fifteenth century created before the knowledge of anatomy and perspective permitted the naturalistic rendering of persons, places, and things. However, the twentieth century study of the art of primitive peoples (stimulated first by Picasso and Braque, who with a "shock of recognition" saw African sculptures in Parisian ethnographic collections and adopted stylistic elements of African art in their own art) has made the term appropriate for the art of primitive peoples, but inappropriate for the art of the school girls and limners and sign painters of rural America. I would urge the use of the term "naive" for this latter art. These works are ingenuous, a dictionary definition for "naive."

The twentieth century modernist emphasis on abstract design rather than on refinement of execution and literary content brought in the thirties and thereafter a reevaluation and renewed interest in the art of those untrained in academic procedures. The art of primitive peoples was admired for its splendid design. The art of children and psychotics was reexamined, not only as a sociological exercise but also for its candor, freshness, and charm. At the same time the art of eighteenth and nineteenth century school girls and matrons, sign painters and limners of rural America was sought out by collectors, dealers, and museums.

Among those who have done extensive research on these latter forms of art is the author Anita Schorsch, who is a Commissioner of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and the writer of numerous books and articles, among them, Mourning Becomes America: Mourning Art in the New Nation; Pastoral Dreams; and "A Key to the Kingdom" (Winterthur Portfolio, 1979). Martin Greif has taught courses in biblical literature at New York University and Queens College and is the author of several books.

Scholars from other fields who are acquainting themselves with this art for the first time may wish the authors had footnoted their quotations, and given data for some of their interpretations. And there are some typographical errors-the most disconcerting one being an incorrect reference to the plates of Prudence Punderson's remarkable series of Apostles. But, in every other respect, the authors have provided us with a thoughtful, thought-provoking text and a visual feast in an area of the conjunction of religion and art which is little known.